Jackie's Journal (4th Excerpt)
Player: James Beech, GM: Claire, Week 4 (September) Cedar Rapids, Iowa US On the weekends when Vegas "cleans house" as they call it, I am strongly encouraged to find a hunt somewhere else. "Cleaning house" means taking care of mob business, and Vegas has made it clear that I am no part mob business. They weren't thrilled when they heard that the hunt I wanted to join included Jordan Summers, the ice mage who'd helped me learn to use my Sight properly. Jordan's a bit of a loose canon and Vegas hasn't really gotten over the time he whipped up and ice ramp to jump our car over a police road block. Personally, I thought it was pretty cool. Anyway, since Vegas didn't have any better options they let me go with Jordan to investigate a series of murders in different states across the Midwest. Each killing had occurred exactly two weeks after the last all of the victims were missing their hearts. With us on this hunt were Morgan, another mage, and Luiz, who's part of some ancient Aztec cult or something. Morgan is a bit of a know-it-all, but a good person to have on your team. Luiz was looking paler than the last time I'd seem him and he was wearing a patch over one eye. He greeted me cheerily enough though, which pleased me. Perhaps he's gotten over his nervousness about Rollo. We started our hunt in Iowa, which is where the last killing had been. The site was maybe tow weeks old, marked by white cross and wreath of flowers on the side of the road. Luiz tried to magically look back in time to see what happened, but whatever the thing was that had killed the victim--a woman inher twenties--it had some sort of scrying shield. I used my Sight to check for the woman's ghosts, but she was long gone. There was a lingering aura of hate and despair though, strong enough to give me a headache. Next we went to check out the woman's car. It was in police impound in the next town over, but Jordan used a invisibility spell to slip by the cameras. He didn't find any real clues, but he managed to collect some of the woman's hair, which Morgan used as part of a tracking spell. She was hoping it would lead us to the woman's missing heart (and thus to the murderer) but again we encounter a magical barrier blocking the spell. Out of options, we spent sometime looking at a map and tried to guess where the murderer would strike next. We had some car trouble though and by the evening when the killer was due to collect another heart, we were still a few miles outside of the town we had chosen as our guess. It was when we stopped for gas that we spotted something odd. A woman was buying something in the little gas station shop, but there were no other cars. Had she walked here? Looking closer I saw the hilt of a heavy hunting knife at her waist and a rust red stain on the sleeve of her shirt. Quickly, I reached out with my telepathy--the part of my Sight that lets me see and speak to mortal minds--and warned the others. Somehow though, the woman seemed to hear my telepathy. She looked right at me, and then at ''Rollo. '' The strange woman tried to slip out of the back of the store and Morgan and I gave chase. I burst outside just in time to see Luiz slamming into her with his car. It didn't seem to hurt her, but the 4000 pounds of metal now resting on her chest did slow her down. Slowly, she began to the lift the car off of herself. Jordan piled ice on top the car and then on top of her, while Morgan began to draw a circle around the whole mess. I reached out with my telepathy and tried to touch the woman's mind. There was something in the way, something like dark roiling fog, but fog with a mind of its own. In that mind I saw the truth; it was demon, possessing the woman but only anchored to this world by the stolen heart she carried in her pocket. And that heart was wearing thin. Soon the demon would need a fresh one and it might just be the woman's own. I hastily explained this to the team. Jordan dropped the ice wall encasing the woman and Morgan skewered the heart she carried with a long icicle. The dark fog around the woman's mind lifted, but it swirled outward in an expanding cloud brushing across us. The strange thing was that it didn't feel scary. It felt...divine. Rollo growled deep in his chest. We could hear police sirens closing in, so we dragged the woman (who was busy protesting that she couldn't remember anything) off across some corn fields and into the woods. There we questioned her. I was inclined to believe that she'd been the demon's victim; I mean its hard enough for me to ignore the things Rollo wants, and at least he doesn't live inside me head. Morgan though was sterner. She got the woman to admit that she'd been part of group in Detroit who'd summoned the demon in a desperate gamble to escape hopeless poverty. They'd kidnapped and killed people to give the demon the the hearts it needed, calling it their Master. Things had gotten ugly though and the woman's own daughter had been killed. She went on the run then, taking hearts when she needed them and dooming her conspirators to slow deaths as the powers they'd been given burned away their lives. Morgan and Luiz wanted to execute the woman but Jordan and I weren't so sure. Then Jordan got a weird look in his eye. He took out the runed hunting knife the woman had been carrying (he'd confiscated it back at the gas station) and began to stalk towards her. With some effort, I managed to convince him to give the knife to me instead. This sort of thing has happened before after all; there was that whole business with the Sword of Neberkenezer, but that's another story. As soon as I had the knife though, i started feeling weird too. I wanted, very badly, to stab the woman we'd taken prisoner in the heart. Rollo felt the desire and flung himself at her, only to be rebuffed by a hasty shield spell from Morgan. That jolted me back to my senses a little. I dropped the knife and opened my Sight. I could see black fog hanging about me and Jordan. Morgan and Luiz got us to sit down next the woman (she was tied to a tree) while they performed a banishment ritual on whatever was left of the demon. It worked, but it seemed to affect our prisoner very badly. She turned pale and I could See that her life force was ebbing away. It turned out that she a cursed medallion in her chest, right where her own heart out to have been. The flesh around it was rotten and cancerous and we thought we'd best destroy it. That turned out to be a bad idea though, as it released to woman's soul it the form of a ghost. She fled from us, but Jordan and I could still see her. He pinned her with more ice, infused with enough magic to stop a spirit from passing through it. That held her long enough for Luiz to finish the prayer he was muttering over his club-sword. Then he rushed forward and slashed blindly, cutting through ghost woman with his sanctified weapon. We burned and buried all the evidence we could then started a long cross-country hike to the nearest airport. I still can't help feeling a little sorry for the woman. In some ways, she wasn't so different from me. I wonder if she knew what she was getting into by summoning a demon, or if she only thought about what she was hoping to get away from.